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Monday, 14 October 2013

Most people are familiar with the concept
of t-glottaling, that is to say the replacement of /t/ with a glottal stop in a
word. Using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a word such as better may be represented as either [betə]
if pronounced with an audible [t], or [beʔə] if pronounced with a glottal stop.
Frequently, the glottal stop pronunciation is also represented as be’er. T-glottaling, once (and still by
some) considered a stigmatized feature of speech, is now widespread in Britain
and is generally perceived as being stereotypical of British urban speech
(although it is by no means confined to urban areas).

The replacement of /t/ with a glottal stop
has been the subject of investigation by many sociolinguists in different parts
of Britain and these studies have generally agreed that t-glottaling is most
likely to occur in certain contexts. Within different social settings, speakers
use t-glottaling more in informal styles of speech than when using a more formal
style of speech and, generally speaking, you might expect to hear more
t-glottaling from speakers lower down the social scale. T-glottaling is also
associated more with younger speakers than with older speakers, an indication
that this is a feature of language change which is still in progress. In
addition to these social constraints on the use of t-glottaling, there are also
linguistic contexts which are more likely to trigger its use. For example, t-glottaling is more likely
to occur word-finally, in a word such as bit,
than in word-medial position, in a word such as bitter. In word-final position, t-glottaling also follows a pattern
in that it occurs most frequently when it is followed by a consonant (put
down), less so when it occurs before a pause (stay put) and least of
all when it is followed by a vowel (put off).

Researcher Erik Schleef goes
a step further in his analysis of t-glottaling. He focuses on t-glottaling
among adolescents in London and Edinburgh and finds that although t-glottaling
follows the patterns discussed above in both locations, his results show
that the Edinburgh teenagers use more t-glottaling overall than the London
teenagers. This may come as somewhat of a surprise as t-glottaling is often
associated with London speech but, as Schleef points out, the phenomenon
actually seems to have had a longer history in Scotland. Schleef also finds
differences between the two locations in the teenagers’ use of word-medial /t/
when the /t/ occurs before a vowel (as in the word bitter), which is the context where t-glottaling is least likely to
occur according to most studies. In London t-glottaling was most likely to
occur before a consonant word-medially but in Edinburgh t-glottaling was just
as likely to occur before either vowels or consonants.

Schleef also examines whether the use of
t-glottaling is influenced by the grammatical category of words and finds that
adjectives and nouns disfavour t-glottaling whereas function words (e.g.
prepositions and pronouns), and both progressive and past participle forms of
verbs (e.g. waiting, waited) tend to
favour glottal replacement. On closer examination, Schleef suggests that
progressives and past participles are likely to show high rates of t-glottaling
because /t/ appears in word-final position of the root word (in this example, wait) which is a context that attracts
high rates of glottal replacement.

Lexical frequency was also investigated and
may also trigger the use of t-glottaling. Schleef found that in both locations
more frequent words favoured glottal replacement when the /t/ occurred in
word-medial position and in London this was also the case for word-final
position. In Edinburgh, Schleef also found that words of four or five syllables
favoured glottal replacement.

What this research indicates is that the
use of glottal replacement may be affected by more than just phonological
factors, as has been assumed in many previous studies. It provides a framework
for the way forward for future studies of this phenomenon.

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

Did you know that being a football fan can
affect your pronunciation? This is what Jessica Love
and Abby Walker discovered from their
interviews with fans of English Premier League and American football.

They interviewed 20 male soccer fans at a
pub in Columbus Ohio showing live screenings of English soccer matches. During
the first part of the interview they asked open ended questions such as ‘please share a happy memory about your
favourite team’; in the second half of the interview they asked participants to
read aloud and briefly comment on specific English and American football terms
such as Arsenal or Blackburn Rovers, Pittsburgh Steelers or Chicago
Bears. Nine of the participants spoke standard British English, had been
born and raised in England and had been in the US for at least two years. The
other eleven participants had been born and raised in the US and had all been
exposed to British English either through having British friends or colleagues
or by regularly watching broadcasts of English Premier League football. Most of
the 20 participants were fans of both English and American football.

The researchers focused on one of the most
striking differences between British and American standard English – the
pronunciation of /r/ in words like cart or,
more importantly here, in the first syllable of Arsenal or the last syllable of Pittsburgh.
The interviews yielded 2369 words such as this, where speakers of standard American
English, but not speakers of Standard British English, would be more likely to
pronounce an /r/. Importantly, although we tend to think of ‘r’ as either
present or absent, fine-grained phonetic analysis shows that the degree of
constriction that produces /r/ is actually a continuous measure. This allowed
the researchers to measure meaningful degrees of constriction resulting in
pronunciations that were more or less /r/ like, even though listeners may not
easily detect the differences.

As you might expect, the biggest effect on
whether an /r/ was pronounced was nationality: the American speakers produced more
/r/ like pronunciations overall. However, all speakers, whether or not they
were American, produced more /r/ like pronunciations when they were talking about
American football than when they were talking about English Premier League. In
other words, they

shifted towards the dialect they associated
with the sport.

More detailed statistical analysis showed
that American speakers shifted only in the second part of the interview, when
they were reading aloud and briefly commenting on a specific sports-related
term. The English speakers shifted more systematically, in both parts of the
interview. Perhaps this simply reflects exposure to the dialects: the English
speakers were currently living in the US, and it was American speakers with the
most exposure to British English who had the largest shift when talking about
English football.

However, Love and Walker argue that identity
may be a further relevant factor. They claim that their participants were
emotionally invested in the sports teams they follow: being an Arsenal Gunner
or an Ohio State Buckeye, they say, is part of a sports’ fan’s identity, just
like gender, ethnicity or nationality. Perhaps this accounts for the finding
that the British speakers who were fans of both American and English football produced
more /r/like pronunciations overall and had the largest shifts between
less/r/like and more /r/like pronunciations: in other words, they were changing
identities when they talked about American football or English football, along
with changing their pronunciation of /r/. One speaker who was a staunch fan of
the Gunners but not of any American football team did not shift his
pronunciation of /r/ at all.

The researchers point out that to test
whether identity as a sports fan is really relevant, we would need to interview
people about a different topic. Would a conversation about the British Monarchy,
they ask, be as effective in eliciting a shift towards British English as a
conversation about a favourite Premier League soccer team?

---------------------------------------------------------

Love, Jessica and Walker, Abby (2012)
Football versus football: Effect of topic on /r/ realization in American and
English sports fans. Language and Speech.
Prepublished 11 September 2012.

Tuesday, 1 October 2013

As the global population grows, our world has somehow seemed
to shrink.Walk down the main streets of
London, Paris, New York or Tokyo and you will see many of the same brand names –MacDonalds
and Starbucks immediately spring to mind.This process of ‘globalisation’ refers to the way in which the world is becoming
more uniform or ‘homogenised’.This has
been attributed to the influence of American culture and one aspect which is of
interest to linguists is the expression of politeness and impoliteness.This has been explored in some service
industries in Britain where typically American expressions like Hi, how are you? and Have a nice day! and customers’ first
names are being more widely used. Such
innovations are often disliked as they seem counter to our traditional British reserve
and are often thought to be impolite.

Maria
Sifianou explores this issue in great detail in a recent paper, arguing
that globalisation cannot be seen simply in terms of homogenisation, especially
with regard to the issue of politeness and impoliteness. Having carried out her
own investigations in the Greek and English contexts, she makes some interesting
observations:

·The emphasis that American culture puts on a
casual approach to business interactions is perceived as impolite in some
societies where politeness has traditionally been associated with formality.American English is therefore blamed for
introducing impoliteness.However, could
it be that culture itself is changing in such places?For example, in Britain there has been a
cultural shift towards emotional expression and openness and a rise in the popularity
of psychology. Maybe this is just being reflected in our more informal language
use?

·The supposed influence of globalisation may
really be dependent on context.For
example, recently Greek politicians have been adopting less formal and more
personalised speaking styles, attributed by some to globalisation.However, it could be that they are actually
trying to distract their audience’s attention from sensitive political issues by
‘casualising’ their speech.

·Sifianou feels that cultural context is especially
important.She notes how, unlike in
Britain and the US, it would be unthinkable for a Greek student to use informal
language or to address University lecturers by their first names.In Greece there is a deep seated culture of
formality which not only indicates politeness, respect and distance but is also
a sign of refinement and good education.Formal language use indicates authority, expert knowledge and
seriousness, so that Greek weather forecasts are highly formalised affairs
unlike their English equivalents which tend to use informal expressions like ‘It’s somewhat of a mixed bag weatherwise.’
So it seems that in Greek politeness strategies may not be following American
English’s lead of becoming more informal.

·Multinational companies like Boots, MacDonalds
and IKEA have their own training programmes that literally teach their
employees what to say to their customers, so that interactions are
scripted.Many believe that these
linguistic norms are then spread across the world as the company grows and
‘travels’.However, Sifianou disputes
whether this is really a true threat to local politeness practices.For example, employees of IKEA in Sweden are
instructed to address customers with the informal form of ‘you’, du, and with employees worldwide
receiving such prescriptive training we would expect this usage to transfer to
other contexts.However, in Greece this
has not happened.In fact Sifianou says
that it would actually be ‘unthinkable’ and impolite for an employee to address
a customer with the informal ‘you’.So
language use is still culture bound, even under the influence of globalisation.

·Sifianou sees globalisation as a ‘process’ which
is just one element affecting language change.She feels it has been misrepresented as a threat to local languages as linguistic
change has taken place throughout history.She argues that linguistic changes being witnessed currently in
communities across the world should be examined within their own
socio-historical context.Just as in the
case of the Greek politicians trying to steer attention away from politics,
what may at first appear to reflect the influence of globalisation may on
closer inspection reveal a very different story.

So I hope, dear reader, that you
may graciously agree with me when I say that globalisation is just one factor
at work with regard to how polite or impolite we are becoming.

Have a nice day!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Sifianou, Maria (2013) The impact
of globalisation on politeness and impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 55: 86—102

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